Ethan, excellent find! The big news for today is that it is possible to get multiple versions of Internet Explorer running on a single Windows box.

Joe Maddalone has written up the process in detail, and while there could be a couple of tweaks to make it easier to understand, I was able to follow it and verify that, yes indeed, IE5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 can all run on the same computer. Here’s my screenshot of IE5.01 in action on an XP box normally running IE6.0.

Great thinking Jon, this is exactly what we need! Now the question is, as Matt Haughey puts it, what possible explanation would keep them from releasing the simple info and making developers the world over happier to use MS products? I’m hoping to get an answer. Stay tuned.

Nothing special, just IE logo on a white box with matching color border, three colors, blue green and red. No text label, couldn’t get anything readable at a small size. Icon includes 48, 32 and 16 square size.

My brain just about exploded when I saw how cool this was. I plan to keep these up as long as humanly possible, and I will try to add Windows 98/Me-compatible versions by this weekend. This is, of course, as long as Microsoft doesn’t kick my ass over it. =)

There is a fairly legitimate box model correction technique that does not work with IE5.* installed in this manner. The idea is to use a proprietary hack to solve a proprietary problem, calling in a stylesheet with box model corrections in this manner:
<!–[if lt IE 6]>
<style type=”text/css” title=”stylesheet” media=”all”>
@import url(/css/IE5LayoutFix.css);
</style>
<![endif]–>
The problem is that while these stand alone installations behave in every manner like IE5.*, they think that they are IE6. Go to Help -> About to see what I mean.

For Linux users the possibility to run multiple versions of IE has existed as long as Wine (http://www.winehq.com) was able to run them. Just create different wine installations and wrapper scripts for each of them. Instructions for IE501, IE5.5 and IE6-SP1 are available at http://frankscorner.org/

The only problem I’ve encountered so far was that IE on Linux doesn’t display PNG’s at all.

Last year I installed IE3 on XP under the impression that it could co-exist with IE6 thinking it was the last standalone version of the browser before being integrated into the OS (mabe it was IE2?). Let’s just say I really messed up my system. IE3 was running fine, but IE6 was trashed and I was getting all sorts of system errors and had to do a reinstall. So I am bit reluctant to try this myself until I know it’s safe. So to those brave souls out there: have you noticed any weirdness yet?

These don’t have an installer. They’re just files that are zipped up. You can unzip them anywhere you want, and the only files that will run are the ones in the unzipped folder.

I’ve added more of the downloads to my site, www.skyzyx.com/articles/000094.php , to include 98/Me versions of the browsers as well. I’ve also posted an IE6 which I’m about to test under 98 and 2000 (where IE5.x is the installed version).

As I said on my website, I’ll keep them posted until Microsoft forces me to take them down.

Ryan:”These don’t have an installer. They’re jusr files that are zipped up.”
Brilliant!
Ryan:”I’ll keep them posted until Microsoft forces me to take them down.”
Hopefully by then enough of us will have copies/mirrors available…Brilliant!
Nils: “The idea is to use a proprietary hack to solve a proprietary problem”
I use conditional comments on my site to feed IE5 specific style rules to deal with its box model and you are correct: IE5/IE5.5 standalones think they are IE6, and thus, do not obey the comments.

“…to use conditional comments (and besides, there are other good ways to feed IE-specific styles to IE only.)”
Other methods, like the voice family hack, have validation issues which is why I choose to use conditional comments and see nothing wrong with doing so. This, of course, is besides the point anyways. The issue here is simply people noting that these standalone versions do deviate in some ways and therefore you should be aware of the differences whether or not you personally use scripts or conditional comments.
“In conclusion, life is now better for web developers. Joe Maddalone, you rock my world.”
No argument there.

“1. IE 5.0 and IE 5.5 behave like themselves, but think that they are IE 6. This only matters if one is using browser detection scripts.” (from comment #15)

Hmm, I probably should do a bit of testing before posting. Apparently, the hacked IE5.0 and IE5.5 browsers send out the proper user agent string; that is, they identify themselves as…themselves. The only place where they wrongly claim to be IE6.0 is under Help -> About.

So it looks as though browser detection DOES work for the hacked IE’s. Try going to www.browserhawk.com using one of the hacked IE’s; the correct browser was detected when I did.

Best news I’ve heard in a while…just dloaded 5.01 and 5.5 SP2 and have got them all up and running. Finally been able to get my company site working in IE5.x *

* O/T: if anybody has had some unexplainable behaviour in IE5.x and is stumped, are you using the original Tantek box model hack? I found it’s caused me no end of rendering grief and reccomend switching to the high pass method instead.

A much more elegant solution is to just run VMWare. Yes it’s pricey, but for development, it can’t be beat. I have everything from IE 2.0 running on NT4 to the latest browsers on XP and Linux; all running on virtual machines.

Just out of interest, (and in in no way do I mean to devalue Joes achievement), if it was this easy - doesn’t it make a mockery of MS’s various depositions to the effect that it isn’t really possible to separate the browser from the OS?

This works brilliantly with only two small problems that I can see- help|about gives the wrong browser version and trying to access the favorites menu crashes the browser. Accessing the favorites from the sidebar works fine though.

So why haven’t Microsoft told anyone about this? I can’t believe that it’s through ignorance and Microsoft must have had thousands of requests from developers wanting to run multiple versions of IE on the same machine.

Surely it can’t be because they thought that having more than one version of IE running on the same PC would undermine their court case?

I remember the good old days of being able to run IE4 and IE5 side-by-side (in “compatibility mode” or something). This is fantastic, useful beyond expression, and so mind-numbingly mundane to users of just about any other browser you care to mention… nice one, Microsoft.

hmmm, let’s see: not as elegant but completely free vs. elegnat but expensive ? each to their own i gues…if you have money to burn (a corporate budget or something) then yes, by all means. even more elegant: a room full of PCs all running the different versions of IE, and a troupe of assistants to hit the F5 whenever you upload a new version… ;)

I suspect we will all find little things that need adjustment now, e.g. the font size on this very page, which suffers from IE5’s poorer inheritence control, I suspect.

Does the 3MB zip file size of each IE5 version suggest that IE is actually quite a lightweight browser? Or that each are using other files shared with IE6 elsewhere on the system (in which case, how can we be sure that those files are the same, i.e. result in a ‘genuine’ IE5 output?).

It’s a good possibility that MS didn’t know about this, because they are concerned about their software fully functioning as they intend it to (well, in theory). These standalones might work for web testing, but are nontheless just hacked versions that barely fulfill their functionality requirements. I doubt MS would spend the time to figure all this stuff out themselves because they would never release such a hacked version, or the details on how to do it, to the public.

I am surprised that someone hasn’t created a single piece of software that emulates the different rendering engines that IE has used since version 3, and can even report as the appropriate user agent. While they were at it, why not just add emulation modes for all the appropriate browsers? If I was a programmer, I would get on that right away. But I’m not.

Just noticed that my IE5 and 5.5 have confused the Google and Radio toolbars. Using View>Toolbars>Radio displays the Google toolbar and View>Toolbars>Google displays Radio.

I’m hoping that this is caused by the implementation of features shared between the browsers and it’s not an indication of deeper problems that cast doubt on the ‘behavioural integrity’ of each browser.

having no luck with the zip versions for win98. the exe’s just seem to load the currently installed ie6 version. unzipped them both to a new folder on my system, tested user agent against browserhawk.com and tried some css but everything is just ie6 still for both the 5.5 and 5.01 exe’s. for example if i run the 5.01 exe, and then click a shortcut for an html file, it will not open in a new window but just load in the window open for 5.01. so clearly for some reason the 5.01exe/5.5exe are just loading ie6 still….
had avant installed (for convenience) so took that off, reinstalled ie6sp1, and still no difference. trawled the registry for any pointers, but after 4 hrs frustration not sure what else i can try! anyone tried the win98 versions, or any advice for this PLEASE PLEASE!! feel i am missing out on something monumental here….

The version string within the dialog box IE grabs from the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version) but has nothing to do with the internal version. Its only for displaying inside this box.

So the internal version has to exists inside another dll. I checked all local dlls but can’t find it. Filemon and Regmon doesn’t show an important information. Perhaps it’s a function call or imbedded data within a system dll…

“Does the 3MB zip file size of each IE5 version suggest that IE is actually quite a lightweight browser? Or that each are using other files shared with IE6 elsewhere on the system (in which case, how can we be sure that those files are the same, i.e. result in a ‘genuine’ IE5 output?).”

Files are shared with the Windows GUI. Notice how if you type a URI into Windows Explorer it suddenly turns itself into IE?

When IE6 SP1 first appeared, I upgraded from IE6 (purely to keep up) and had huge JavaScript problems. I attempted an uninstall, choosing the option to “Return to previous Windows configuration”. All went fine until I re-booted. The un-installer had forgotten to put back a load of the old files - leaving me with no access to programs etc. I was running WinME on that box at the time, so my attempts to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and run Explorer.exe from the Task Manager were fruitless.

Anyway, the point of that is to show that a lot of the files that IE uses are part of Windows. It is possible to remove IE from Windows, however the pathetic amount of diskspace saved isn’t worth the risk.

Well, I’m surprised nobody has tried this with IE4.01 yet. Okay, so I tried it. And I’m typing this in IE4.01. To be honest, I’m not sure how accurate this is but Dave, your site doesn’t look so good. :) My only problem right now is that the address bar isn’t working. I had to open up the search bar and do a search on Google in order to bring up any pages. My trick for getting it working was the same as IE5 and IE5.5 as indicated on the site. If I have time I’ll see about putting together a downloadable streamlined version.

“Luke Redpath has put together a great set of colour-coded icons for the various IE installs.”

The icons are great and all but I personally don’t like to clutter my taskbar with so many IE icons that are sure to confuse my parents when they try and surf the web–haven’t been able to convert them to Firebird yet ;)

I’ve created an HTA that uses a bit of VBScript to launch various browsers on my system. I’ve placed a shortcut to the HTA on my taskbar to access it directly. It works for me.

I just updated the mirrors list at www.skyzyx.com to reflect the mirrors that Manuel has informed me of. I’ve also added some clarification on compatibility and version issues that have been cropping up…

Hope this helps!

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